Codes of Gender

Lindsay Georger, Megan, Noemi, Catie, Ashley

Digital Story Proposal

             Workers at Foxconn have endured less than ideal conditions in the Apple factories. Foxconn supports Apple, Sony, HP, Dell, Nintendo, Motorola, and Nokia. Mainly in the Apple factories, the workers put up with low wages and long hours under an inhumane and abusive management system. For my digital story, I will start by talking about the harsh realities that are Foxconn factories.

             The employees are being driven towards suicide so I will explain the reasons behind the suicides. First and foremost, the “employees are paid only $1.78 per hour.” (Mashable.com) While working they must have some place to live so they can rent out dorms for $17 a month. These are not your average double rooms however. The employees share the rooms with seven roommates. While on the job, the work is lengthy and difficult making the low wages not even comparable to what they deserve. To assemble a single iPad, it takes five days and three hundred seventy five pairs of hands. Employees are using chemicals and materials that may be harmful to be around such as raw aluminum amongst other metals. In one shift, an employee can carve the apple logo into aluminum three thousand times or make 150,000 iPad cameras. They do this by taking very short breaks or no breaks at all in their already long workday. Their shifts are twelve hours and they get two meal breaks. The meals are seventy cents for cafeteria-style meat and rice. Despite these horrible conditions, thousands of people line up for the job because they need some sort of income. Of the people that want the job, Foxconn hires eighty percent of those people, some of which are as young as thirteen.

            Due to all of the previous conditions, between 2010 and 2013, twenty-four people tried to kill themselves because of the circumstances. In that time period, there were three suicide attempts in three days all of which ended with death. All of the people who attempted suicide were under the age of twenty-six. One specific instance was a seventeen-year-old girl who attempted suicide in 2010. She is now paralyzed from the waist down. Another circumstance falls on July 16, 2009, which is the date of one of the very first suicides. A man lost an iPhone so employees with seniority beat him and searched his room. He jumped from his apartment building the next day. Clearly, this is not right and there is no coincidence in this situation. Next in my digital story, I am going to try to collect some footage from the actual factory workers or stories about them in order to portray to my audience the type of people that are working in the factories and the type of people that are ending their lives all for a job. By putting in little clips of the factory workers, it will strike the viewers heartstrings hopefully because it’s hard to watch something and think that the person in the video is so unhappy.

            Following the clips of real life Foxconn employees, I plan to elaborate on the improvements that Foxconn has made even though very little progress has been made. However, small changes have been made to alter the once unimaginable work place that was Foxconn. First, they announced, “No employee could work more than 49 hours a week”. (NY Times) Also, people working for Foxconn who were sixteen and seventeen have to work lighter jobs and cannot work at night. Regarding the suicides, all Foxconn has done is put a suicide net around the perimeter of their factories and dorm buildings. People consider this to be putting a bandage on the issue. I intend for my digital story to make people think about what else could be done to make working at Foxconn less miserable.

            The style of my digital story is going to be set up like a power point but the pictures are going to play as videos as a means of transitioning from topic to topic. My digital story will start with the horrible things that have happened to the employees at Foxconn then transition into what the employees did because of their circumstances at the factories. From there, I will talk about what Foxconn did to improve how the employees felt about the company. At the end, I plan to leave it somewhat open-ended in hopes that the audience can join in and offer some better solutions to help the employees at Foxconn.

  

Works Cited

"Improving Working Conditions at Foxconn." New York Times. New York Times

            Company, 26 Dec. 2012. Web. 7 Nov. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com>

Kelly, Samantha Murphy. 10 Staggering Facts behind Apple's Foxconn Factory.

            Mashable. N.p., 22 Feb. 2012. Web. 7 Nov. 2013. <http://mashable.com>.

In doing our social action project, it has gotten me thinking about the suicides at Foxconn. It poses a lot of questions. Does employees losing their lives not strike a cord with the owners? Do the other employees try to stop the suicides? How could they not try to stop the suicides sooner? Why did it take eighteen attempted suicides for it to get people's attention? The answer to these questions are anything but simple. The owners definitely could have done something to prevent the suicides. After the second person that should have triggered something and made them investigate and wonder. Didn't they think of the worker's families? Or the lives that they were leaving behind because of their working conditions. Why did it have to take multiple suicides for them to even put up nets? The people at Foxconn are selfish and apparently heartless. To know that eighteen people wanted their lives to end because of the working conditions that the owners lay out for them is disheartening and needs to change. Hopefully our social action project can have some effect on the situation. Even though we are only six people in a school of less than four thousand, we are hoping that through the student body and the power of the internet that we can make a change or at least make some steps towards a change.

Technology in Education

Technology is becoming much more prevalent in schools these days. The majority of classrooms have multiple computers. Some have tv's or smart boards. All of these tools are making teaching easier and using technology to get the lesson across. But is technology also hurting the student? While technology is used in the classroom, it is also used outside the classroom for homework or research. The majority of students have laptops or iPads and stay up late at night to complete their work on them. For some, I know that working on a computer can be somewhat distracting. When typing something up or looking up information on the computer, I know that I personally get distracted. I will type up a little bit and then check facebook, go on twitter, or listen to some music and next thing I know, an hour has passed and I am still not done with my work. The only thing stopping someone from getting distracted is self control which some people lack. Also, studies have shown that using electronics before bed such as a computer or cell phone throws off your sleep schedule due to the bright lights. And I know that lots of students stay up working on homework before bed. An article from US News says "The problem is that light exposure before sleep can disrupt body rhythms and suppress the release of the hormone melatonin, which promotes sleep."

Your iPhone is Killing People

There are many parts to an iPhone and many materials that make up this lovely piece of technology. But what are the dangers behind it and what are the sacrifices being made in order for us to enjoy that phone? The factory where they make these phones has such harsh conditions that the workers are miserable. They work long hours with short breaks if any. They work in uncomfortable conditions that have led some people to suicide. Is it far for these people to lose their lives or work like this just for us to enjoy our phones? Recently we watched a video with all of the chemicals that are in the materials used to make an iPhone. Thinking that people have to work with these materials on a daily basis is upsetting. If this problem was more prevalent in society and people spread the world, would things change? Would people keep buying iPhone's? Would the factory change its ways? No one really knows the whole story behind the production of iPhones. But if they did, what would change? The reality is probably nothing because the brand itself is successful and people enjoy their phone. This is just another example of us being selfish and putting our wants ahead of other peoples need.

Discussion Questions

1) Would you prefer a production based society or a consumption based society? Why?

2) Is there ever a point where we are truly satisfied with everything around us and in our lives?

3) Do you see our society as more production or consumption?

Social Media is An Outlet

The internet is used for everything these days. When we do not know the answer to something, we turn to the internet. You can basically find anything on the internet. People use the internet to make friends even. People will just add random people on Facebook or follow them on twitter and in some cases, friendships form over the computer. Or take match.com for example. People are meeting their significant others over the internet. There are still some concerns with what on the internet is true and what to trust. Some people, I think, are too trusting over the internet. So if people put so much faith and trust into the internet, it has become a great place to rap consumers into advertisements and buying things they do not need. So many people are on the internet these days that advertising on the internet is the most effective way to get a product out there. Personally, I notice the ads but do not necessarily pay attention to them because I find them annoying. On the side of browser pages, there are constantly ads but how often do people pay attention to them? And on videos, there are ads but 9 times out of 10, we skip them or do something else while they are playing. However, ignoring said ads may not be what everyone does. Some people might actually look at those ads and they may appeal to them. Even though some people like myself find ads to be annoying, using the internet to broadcast said ads is the smartest marketing move.